The eighth in a roughly weekly series of short excerpts from my book, Kanban from the Inside. The Kanban method’s second Foundational Principle is very direct: FP2: Agree to pursue evolutionary change. In just a few more words: Agree that change … Continue reading →
Kanban from the Inside: 7. Understanding
The seventh in a roughly weekly series of short excerpts from my book, Kanban from the Inside. A Pattern for Purposeful Change: Lets make the understanding principle more concrete. Start with what you do now, understanding the purpose of the system, how it serves the customer, how it works for those inside the system
Kanban from the Inside: 5. Flow
This post is the fifth in a roughly weekly series of excerpts from my book, Kanban from the Inside. Chapter 5 is on flow. Like the preceding chapter, it is inspired by the third of the Kanban Method’s core practices, Manage flow. … Continue reading →
Kanban from the Inside: Balance
Inside the system, we balance workload against the system’s capacity, both for the sake of the people doing the work and for the improved performance and predictability that comes as a result. But it doesn’t have to stop there.
Interesting things happen when your system’s capability to deliver against each category becomes known. You can help your customers to make better-informed choices.
In the pursuit of effectiveness
It’s probably worth starting by explaining where the three circles ideas came from. Most of it is born out of my frustrations of seeing too many attempts at Agile fail or become very hard work to the extent that Agile gets a bad name or teams adopt a “fragile” approach instead. In all client meetings … Continue reading →
Kanban’s Geological Record
Craig Watson (@craigowatto) from SkyBet.com has been hoarding away the cards that flow across his teams card wall for many months. He’s kept them in the exact order they were completed. Craig explains “it’s like a geological record of the Kanban system”. As a very general guide, blue cards are platform related, yellow cards are new … Continue reading →
One Constant… Lots Of Variety
So we are a year old. What have we learned? We set up Custerian because we want to help business’s be more successful. Perhaps its an age thing, but you do get to a point in life where you appreciate phrases like ‘Giving Back’ or ‘Paying Forward’ more, so this altruistic outlook, making other’s successful, makes sense.
Scaling Kanban – Organisational Design
When applying Kanban principles beyond a single team you hit a number of organisational design challenges. I’ve found the biggest, most contentious challenge is how to organise the teams. Here are some organising principles I’ve come across…
Understand motivation for change
One piece of feedback I’ve received a few times on step 1 of STATIK (and therefore on chapter 18 of my book Kanban from the Inside also) is that “Understand sources of dissatisfaction” sounds rather negative. What about sources of satisfaction, pride, strength, and so on? Are those unimportant?
My week in a wordle
It was a very busy week last week. This wordle shows the topics / spread of discussion from various clients and activities I’ve been involved in.
